"trust"

In life and running, the past six months have been profoundly challenging and changing.

I've not been able to run nearly enough during this period, and when the space has opened to run with heart, it's been a profound exercise in aligning inner and outer, light and dark, fearless and hesitant.

Running alchemizes. It empties out all the noise so that I can hear my own voice, the voice of intuition, the one voice I trust.

Tonight, I headed into the woods just before dusk, a short run I told myself. I began and everything fell into place - time disappeared; form, breathing, cadence, the density of the air I was breathing, it all just clicked. I shot off 2 miles past my turnaround plan. Heading back; however, dusk was descending, shadows clinging to my vision's periphery, and I noticed the tension in my body - the spacious mental space I'd been basking-in had tunneled into fear. I was not familiar with this particular trail. It runs along sewer easements, rutted out mountain bike single track paths, and the terrain is what runners call technical (i.e. roots & rocks, not pebbles but large rocks you have to pick your way through or twist an ankle), not to mention isolated.

For a quarter of a mile I entertained vivid narratives of what running back across a rocky 2 miler in descending twilight could produce; tripping, falling and breaking a limb; tripping, falling and being eaten by coyotes; tripping, maiming my body and crawling for hours and hours to reach my car; being tripped and abducted by someone in the woods for dubious reasons, or simply banging up my knees, palms and face. 

Adrenaline propelled my pace 30 seconds lower, meaning I was running faster in the dark across rocks I couldn't see; rocks I'd known better than to run that fast over when I could keep my eyes a few feet in front of each foot fall.

Somehow the "I'm going to die a slow painful death in the woods" narrative vanished, and my body reminded me that my feet would know where to land, if I could trust them to be my eyes.

Every time I felt my shoulders tense, and my eyes strain in the dark, I heard that message, trust your feet, they are your eyes.

I ran the next 1.75 miles in the dark, feet skimming the ground, landing in light foot falls that could compensate for the shift of landing on an unstable surface.

I did not fall. I'm not sure why I didn't, but I want to believe that this wasn't about falling, or adjusting to the quicker night-falls of Autumn, but possibly learning to trust what I cannot see.